LeGette Blythe

“ I’ve heard much about the women of Germania, and seen them, too. Women with yellow hair and complexions like the bloom of the apricot or the skin of the pomegranate. And women free for the asking, eh, Centurion?”
“Not often for the asking. Sometimes for the taking.” He pulled her close and felt through his tunic the quick surge of her warmth against him. “But tonight is not Germania and women whose hair is the color of ripening grain, Claudia. Tonight is Rome and a woman with hair as black as a raven’s wing and skin fair and smooth and warm and greatly tempting.” ”

“ For a moment she was thoughtful, and Claudia said nothing to break the silence. “But I suppose you’re right, Claudia,” she said at last. “If I have any god at all, he’s the two-headed god of power and money. And if the Tetrarch were your Longinus, well, my god would have a third head, pleasure. I envy you, Claudia! By the way,” she added, as she poured wine for her guest and herself, “may I be so bold, my dear, as to inquire how things between you and the centurion stand just now?”
“That’s why I came to see you, Herodias. ”

“ And when tomorrow you leave for Rome with the profits made from your glassware, you will be carrying the lives of many slaves in your package, won’t you? And when at the markets of Rome and Antioch and Alexandria you sell those beautiful goblets with their slender, rose-tinted stems, you will know that you are selling glass colored with the lifeblood of men such as that old Greek, that slave who perhaps by now has been consumed in the very furnace that exacted his life? ”

“ Cornelius watched the spume thrown up by the flashing oars as they cut into the muddy waters. He turned back to face Longinus. “That’s the difficulty, you know, communication. How can one get a grip upon a god—the god, if there be but one, and the way I see it that is the only sensible answer—like those slaves down there grip the oar handles? How can one hear a god, see him, taste him? Obviously, one cannot, for this god, whether there be one or many, must be different from man; he must be a spiritual being rather than a physical one. ”

“ Claudia studied the face of her Idumaean friend. “Herodias, you worship power, don’t you?”
“Why shouldn’t I?” Herodias replied tartly. “Power and wealth, you forget, are rightfully mine. I am the granddaughter of Mariamne, King Herod’s royal wife, daughter of the Maccabeans, while Philip’s mother was only a high priest’s daughter and the mother of Antipas was a Samaritan woman. I am descended from the true royalty in Israel.” Her irritation faded as quickly as it had come. “You say I worship power. What else, pray, is there for one to worship? Your pale, anemic Roman gods? ”

“ This is the veritable beating, pulsing heart of Rome, and Rome is the world. Here is reality. Here are solidity, strength, planning made real, dreams hewn in enduring stone. Here are wealth, accomplishment, power, might. Not twenty paces across there is the Millenarium Aureum, the resplendent bronze column set up to mark the center of the Roman world, the point from which miles are counted along the highways and their joining sea lanes stretching to the ends of the known earth to bind Rome into one colossal, unconquerable, enduring Empire!... ”

“ Every Jewish home, whether pretentious stone residence crowning Mount Zion or squalid malodorous hovel burrowed beneath the city’s walls in noisome Ophel, was overflowing with pilgrim kinsmen returned for this greatest annual feast of Israel. For every person living in Jerusalem, Centurion Longinus casually estimated as he stood on Fortress Antonia’s balcony outside his chamber, perhaps ten pilgrims had squirmed themselves inside the walls of the old city. And countless other thousands had been unable to find living quarters within the walls. ”

“ As a servant came running up to mop the spilled wine and remove the broken glass, Antipas settled back on his couch. “Aha! The clever little vixen was too quick for me,” he said, turning to face his wife. “But I’ll....” He said no more. Herodias, Claudia saw, was unsmiling, grim. But evidently she hadn’t meant for Antipas to see her in such a mood, for quickly she affected a cloaking smile. “By the gods,” she said to her husband, “the child is clever, isn’t she?”
Salome was now in the center of the bright light. The music had died away as the leader awaited his new instructions. ”

“ No report would go to Rome from the High Priest, no fawning spies would tell how the Procurator had freed a cunning revolutionary, but Claudia had warned him not to judge the Galilean. Could his wife, by all the gods, be a secret follower of this mystic? Didn’t many high-placed women of Rome become devotees of this strange Jewish one-god religion? Could the Emperor’s stepdaughter, by great Jove, have become, of all persons, interested in religion, in any 303 religion? Could Claudia really feel strongly about this Nazarene fellow? ”

“ His grim expression relaxed, but he was still serious. “No, when one sees the condition in which countless men live, the utter unfairness of things, one cannot logically believe in the existence of such a god as you have described. Indeed, it is more logical to believe in our Roman gods than in the god of your old tutor or the Yahweh of the Jews, in our good ones contending with the evil ones”—he shrugged—“with the evil ones usually winning. But it is even more logical, Cornelius, to believe in no gods at all.” ”

“ Now she turned fiercely upon the Tetrarch. “Didn’t you hear him, O Tetrarch? ‘He demands!’ That old goat of Arabia demands of you, Herod, Tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea. He writes you an evil, insulting message abusing you and your wife, and you sit here calmly listening while that man reads it before these your guests and me your Tetrarchess....”
“But, my beloved Herodias”—Antipas clutched the table’s edge as he straggled to get to his feet—“these men are only the messengers of King Aretas. What you hear are not this man’s words, they are the King’s.” ”

“ Now the Tetrarch, beaming, looked to his left beyond his Tetrarchess. “It is our wish that our beloved daughter Salome honor our birthday by dancing for the Tetrarch and his guests,” he declared in honeyed tones. “Will you not dance for us, my dear child?”
Cornelius leaned forward to watch Herodias’ daughter. Salome seemed amazed at her stepfather’s request. “But, Sire,” she ventured to protest, as she turned on her couch to face the unctuously smiling Tetrarch, “doesn’t my dear father know that I am not a dancer? Surely he prefers the dancing of women trained in the art.” ”

“ Now Sejanus was suddenly grave, and old, and the flame was only of an innate cunning. He leaned toward the centurion. “Longinus, any man in Rome, any man, would be happy to marry Claudia. She’s beautiful, rich, highly intelligent, and the granddaughter of Rome’s greatest Emperor. Being that, she remains a threat to us as long as she is in Rome. What if some strong, ambitious general or senator, for example, should marry her and undertake to displace Tiberius?” ”

“ Longinus shook his head. “You’ve got me, Cornelius. I cannot imagine a spirit, a being without a body, a something that is nothing.”
“Many persons can’t, Centurion. And that’s the main difficulty in accepting the Jews’ Yahweh, their one god. He is a spirit, they say, without physical form or substance. They believe in him, but how do they know him, how do they learn what he’s like? In a word, if he does exist, how can he be made comprehensible to man?” ”

“ Blame rather Rome’s mounting vanity and greed, her selfishness, cruelty.”
“You know I’m not blaming the gods, Cornelius; I have no more faith than you have even in their existence. They are nothing but pale nobodies, fabrications in which not even intelligent children believe.”
“Fabrications, yes. Our gods are inventions, but they serve a purpose and are necessary.”
“Necessary?” The centurion’s face had twisted into a heavy scowl. “Why, Cornelius?”
“Because they fill a place, supply a need, Longinus. It’s the nature of man to look to some higher power, isn’t it, some greater intelligence? ”

“ For five days the roads into Caesarea from Jerusalem and central Judaea were clogged with a motley throng of Jews pushing relentlessly toward the Procurator’s Palace. Here and there in the multitude rode a man or woman on a donkey, but countless hundreds trudged on foot, dust-covered and weary in every bone but more outraged in spirit. ”

“ Then the prophet’s stern eyes turned again toward the Tetrarch. “Herod, cast this foul woman from you! Have you not stolen her away from the bed of your brother? You cannot have her, O Tetrarch! Does not God’s holy law forbid a man from taking to bed the wife of his living brother in the flesh? Adulterer! Repent! And you, evil woman, you adulteress”—John’s eyes were fiery now with a wild zeal as he faced Herodias, whose flushed cheeks and lips drawn into thin lines revealed her fury—“neither shall you have him! ”

“ Cornelius may prate of his old tutor’s preachments about the imperishability of the intangibles and the reality of things unseen. But these statues, these temples, this Millenarium Aureum, are tangible. Rome is carved statuary and fluted marble magnificence; Rome is spacious mansions and marching great armies flaunting their ensigns. Rome is poverty, too, and injustice and ugliness at times and in places, but Rome is no pale intangibles, no vaporous conjurations of an eastern philosopher. ”

“ I keep thinking of the old Greek up there. I don’t know what life gave him, of course, before some invading Roman soldiers destroyed his home—if he had a home—certainly his way of life, and dragged him to Rome, where he simply had the bad luck to fall into the hands of the Prefect. But there’s no mystery about what life has offered him since his enslavement. And this man may have been another Pheidias, Centurion, a man more intelligent, more cultured, a better man, my friend, than nine out of ten of the equestrians in Rome. Obviously, then, life has been unfair to him. ”

“ Shall I crucify the King of the Jews?”
Crucify Jesus of Galilee?
“No, Pilate! No! No!” She was running toward the Procurator to stand beside the Galilean. “No, my husband, have nothing to do with this good man!”
... But Pilate does not see me or hear me. Nor does the Galilean. 275 Am I a disembodied spirit? But there are no spirits. Oh, Tullia. But Tullia neither hears nor sees me....
“Then take him yourselves and crucify him. His death be your responsibility.” Pilate was speaking again. “I am free of his blood.”
“No! No! No, Pilate! You are sending an innocent man to his death! ”

“ You see, Sejanus and the Emperor married you off to Pilate to get you far away from Rome. They intend for you to remain away. Until”—he shrugged—“there’s a violent change in Rome, you must not return.”
They sat quietly and looked out at the fishing boats plying the sea.
“I won’t remain long in Rome, I think,” he said after a while. “If the gods are good, Claudia, it will be only a few months until....”
“If the gods are good!” she interrupted, harshly. “There are no good gods, Longinus. There are no gods!” She scowled and looked away. “If there are, how can they be so perverse?” ”

“ Her head was back, in line with the rest of her body, and her sultry eyes looked upward to her extended forefinger. Now it began to move, almost imperceptibly, so that few of the Tetrarch’s guests were aware of the beginning of its motion. But Cornelius, intrigued, saw the finger’s movement widening and speeding; like a serpent it was coiling and uncoiling, twisting sideways, darting, writhing, all in perfect rhythm with the music. As he watched, the motion of the finger appeared to flow like liquid downward to involve the hand and then the forearm. ”

“ John raised a lean and burnt arm and the haircloth robe slid down along it to his shoulder. He pointed a darting forefinger toward the Temple’s emissary, and his countenance was solemn. “I tell you, that One is now among us, though you have not recognized him as the Messiah of God. And though he comes after me in time, he ranks before me; indeed, I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose his sandal straps. I baptize you with water, but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire!”
“Then, Rabbi, why do you baptize with water?” ”